HARRISBURG - With just one day left to achieve an on-time state budget and no further talks planned, the impasse between Gov. Wolf and the Republican-controlled legislature seems certain to end in a partial government shutdown. On Monday, Wolf sent letters to state employees and contractors preparing them for the likely outcome of Pennsylvania's missing Wednesday's deadline to enact a spending plan for the new fiscal year. Though missing the deadline by a few days - or even weeks - would not have repercussions, a protracted impasse would restrict the state's ability to spend and pay bills.

When Randy Wolf finished running early yesterday morning, he sat down behind the bullpen at Jack Russell Stadium and acknowledged both his disgust and his concern. Wolf knows that the season is fast approaching and that he wasn't even close to being on top of his game when the Cincinnati Reds torched him for six first-inning runs Wednesday. "To go out there and throw 40 pitches in the first inning, it's just embarrassing," Wolf said. The objective for Wolf is obvious: Correct the problem.

Former Phillie Randy Wolf will get a nice payday if he can make 30 starts and pitch 200 innings for the San Diego Padres. The lefthander finalized a one-year deal with the Padres yesterday that will top out at $9 million if he attains all his incentives. He will make $4.75 million in base pay. Wolf was 9-6 with a 4.23 ERA in 18 starts with the Los Angeles Dodgers this year. He did not pitch after July 3 because of soreness in his left shoulder. He had surgery in September.

Gov. Wolf named six new members to the governing board of the bistate Delaware River Port Authority on Wednesday. The agency, which operates the PATCO commuter rail line and four toll bridges between Philadelphia and South Jersey, is now run by 16 Democratic appointees or officeholders. Wolf's appointees are: Ryan Boyer of Philadelphia, business manager of the Laborers' District Council of Metropolitan Philadelphia and Vicinity, which represents 5,000 workers on major construction projects.

TOM WOLF is now in office 100 days, just a mini-milestone to be sure, but enough to suggest what to expect from the business guy turned governor. I sat with Wolf this week in Harrisburg, in the ornate reception room outside his office. He was, as usual, soft-spoken, direct, focused on broad themes; pushing his agenda despite significant resistance from the Republican-controlled Legislature. His biggest surprise so far? "I'm actually enjoying this job," he says, especially getting around the state and meeting with "real people.

IN PRACTICAL terms, Gov. Tom Wolf's removal of Bill Green as chair of the School Reform Commission, to be replaced by Marjorie "Marge" Neff, shouldn't have much immediate impact on Philadelphia schools. From all accounts, the all-volunteer SRC seems to have accomplished the not-easy feat of working as a unified body, shepherding the District through the rocky shoals of financial and political upheaval. It does seem likely that Gov. Wolf was intent on sending a message with the move.

Gov. Wolf vetoed a plan Thursday to privatize the state liquor industry, as his standoff with Republican legislators over the state budget continued. The Democratic governor also vetoed an education funding bill that applied a new formula for distributing aid to school districts. The actions came days after Wolf vetoed the $30.1 billion budget passed by the Republican-controlled legislature, leaving Pennsylvania without a spending plan at the start of a new fiscal year. The vetoed liquor bill would allow private retailers to sell wine and liquor, which now can be sold only at State Stores.

When Hellmut Gottschild turned to a solo career three years ago, after decades of leading the ZeroMoving Dance Company and teaching, it must have felt like a tremendous risk. But his performances since then have justified that risk, affording audiences the rare and revelatory sight of an older dancer renewing himself artistically. His program at the Painted Bride this weekend highlights two extended works, one pure dance and the other the ambitious Meet Mr. R., a theater/dance meditation on the legend of Romulus and Remus, first seen in 1993.

HARRISBURG - Calling Gov. Wolf's moratorium on the death penalty "an egregious violation" of the state constitution, Pennsylvania's top prosecutor is asking its Supreme Court to clear the path for the state's first execution in more than a decade. In a filing Wednesday, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane asked the court to allow the execution of Hubert L. Michael Jr., who confessed to murdering a York County teenager two decades ago. Kane argued that it is "blatantly unconstitutional" for Wolf to stay all death sentences, and that allowing Wolf's moratorium to stand would effectively grant him the authority to ignore any laws with which he does not agree.

Jean-Marc Pelletier made 25 saves and recorded his second shutout of the season as the Phantoms shut out the Hartford Wolf Pack, 2-0, in an American Hockey League game last night at the First Union Spectrum. Brian Wesenberg's power play goal at 1:49 of the second period proved to be the game-winner. He was just beyond the slot when he fired a turnaround slap shot past Hartford goalie Milan Hnilicka for his first goal of the season. Matt Henderson completed the scoring for the Phantoms (4-6-0-1)

HARRISBURG - Late last week, Gov. Wolf quietly made a 90-minute road trip to the State College area to talk to Republican legislative leaders about the budget impasse. There were no cameras or fanfare - and, unlike in the last few months, no rhetoric or sweeping public pronouncements in the aftermath. It was the second time in three days the two sides seemed to give more than perfunctory face time to each other. Yet each meeting ended the same way: without an agreement to keep government running.

HARRISBURG - Gov. Wolf on Thursday named Mary Isenhour, a key aide and Democratic Party veteran, to be his new chief of staff, one day after Katie McGinty resigned for what many observers believe will be a U.S. Senate campaign. A former state Democratic Party leader and political strategist, Isenhour had been Wolf's director of legislative affairs. "She is stepping into some very big shoes," the governor said during a Capitol news conference. But he said she knows how to manage people and has the ability to work with the Republican-controlled legislature.

Katie McGinty, Gov. Wolf's chief of staff for the last six months, resigned Wednesday and is expected to soon enter the 2016 Democratic primary election for the U.S. Senate. Wolf's press secretary, Jeff Sheridan, on Wednesday said McGinty told the governor that it would be her last day on the job. Speculation has swirled in recent weeks around McGinty and the Senate race, fueled in part by her meeting two weekends ago with officials from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on Martha's Vineyard.

Gov. Wolf on Tuesday asked the state Supreme Court to ignore Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane's challenge to his death-penalty moratorium, arguing that the justices had already decided to consider a similar petition brought by the Philadelphia district attorney. In a court filing that responds to Kane's petition, Wolf also repeated the claim he has made since February: That he has the right under the state constitution to temporarily stay executions as he awaits a Senate report on capital punishment.

As Pennsylvania entered its third week without a budget, Gov. Wolf and the Republicans whose support he needs to pass a spending plan were hundreds of miles apart - and not just figuratively. Wolf spent the day Monday touting his plan in Western Pennsylvania, while Philadelphia-area GOP legislators gathered in Norristown to assail the governor's position on key budget issues - and what they call his unprofessional, take-no-prisoners public relations war against them. The lawmakers called a news conference to respond directly to what they consider to be misleading television ads and mailers that attack each of them individually.

HARRISBURG - With budget negotiations between Gov. Wolf and GOP leaders grinding to a halt, a Republican legislator from Bucks County stood inside the largely deserted Capitol on Thursday with a compromise plan. Rep. Gene DiGirolamo said that negotiators had become entrenched, and that a prolonged impasse would hamper the state's ability to pay nonprofit organizations that provide key social services. DiGirolamo said he hoped his roughly $30.6 billion spending proposal would spur a deal.

HARRISBURG - Gov. Wolf emerged from closed-door budget talks Monday saying he was "stunned" by what he called "the continued intransigence" of a top Republican legislator opposed to a new tax on natural-gas drillers. Wolf said House Speaker Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny), one of the legislature's most vocal opponents of the severance tax proposal, "would rather do good things for his friends in the oil and gas industry than help find a way to fund schools. " "We are not going to have a good future in Pennsylvania until we figure out how to fund schools," the governor said.

HARRISBURG - Pennsylvania's nearly two-week budget impasse comes down to one word: Taxes. Throughout negotiations, Democratic Gov. Wolf has uttered the dreaded T-word that Republicans who control the legislature have studiously spent the last four years avoiding. Personal income taxes. Sales taxes. Cigarette taxes. Bank shares taxes. A tax on natural gas drillers. Wolf has proposed hiking them all to erase what has become a recurring deficit in every budget cycle, raise more money for public schools, and finance a bold but controversial plan to lower property taxes in every district.

The shale gas industry and allies of Gov. Wolf ratcheted up rhetoric this week over a key component of the state's stalemated budget debate: Imposition of a severance tax on natural gas production. The Marcellus Shale Coalition says the proposed tax is the harshest in a series of hostile actions the Wolf administration has taken against the gas industry, one of the state's better-performing economic sectors in the last decade. "Since Gov. Wolf was elected, he has been talking about this industry being successful, but his actions really don't match the words," said David Spigelmyer, president of the coalition.

HARRISBURG - Gov. Wolf on Thursday vetoed the Republican-backed pension reform plan, striking down the final piece of a trifecta of budget bills from the GOP-controlled legislature. Wolf said that he understood the need for reining in the skyrocketing cost of public-employee pensions, but that "this legislation provides no immediate cost savings to taxpayers and does not maximize long-term savings for taxpayers. " "We need pension reform that works," Wolf said in a statement.